Life asked death, "Why do people love me but hate you?"
Death responded, "Because you are a beautiful lie and I am a painful truth."
--- Unknown

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Getting Busier (and Crazier)

Lots of traffic in the office, but mostly tire-kickers and people looking for jobs. (Side note: if you think you may be interested in being a tax preparer, the time to inquire is before tax season begins.) The walk-out rate seems to be increasing faster the the filing rate, which given that most people had it as bad or worse than we did in 2009 makes sense. Money is tight for most everyone. At least anyone likely to come to our office to get taxes done. I'm heading in today, even though I wasn't originally scheduled to be there. I'm hoping to just play receptionist/traffic cop and let my other person get some practice doing returns. I may have to jump in if we get a lot of walk-in's, but that hasn't been happening much. Yet. I'm sure the tsunami will hit next week and the first couple weeks in February when everyone has their w-2's in hand. Are we having fun yet?

Our former home town is getting washed away. Many of the people we know who own businesses are getting hit hard either by flood damage or just a complete lack of business. Our former apartment building was built into a steep slope which makes me wonder how we would be fairing right now if we had been able to stay.

There is a lot in climate news, but it still boils down to the same thing: are we willing to destroy the world economy trying to prevent something that may or may not even be happening, or, if it is happening, is the result of natural processes over which we have no control? Given the enormous costs, would it not be prudent to spend a fraction of a percent of that in order to reduce the uncertainties? Of course none of this addresses the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) problem. People don't want wind farms, biomass facilities, or any other green technology anywhere near their homes, and with good reason; they are either loud, ugly, smelly or some combination of the above. Which makes the promise that the US will ever generate 20% of its electricity with wind generators seem a little reality-challenged.